Page:The Seven Cities of Delhi.djvu/101

 churches stand scattered about on a plain, without a house at hand to shelter a worshipper.

It may well be asked, "Why did they abandon a city which had been surrounded by walls, and was therefore secure ; why pull down those walls to build others not so very far off ?" Many a city in India still occupies the same site which it has occupied for many a century ; at least, the inhabitants have but very slightly shifted their houses. The explanation of this will be attempted later ; but first let us consider the seven cities of Delhi in the order in which they were built.

If Hindu tradition is to be believed, the city of Indraprastha, sung of in the great Indian epic, the "Mahabharata," was situated on these plains ; over the possession of this city were waged the wars, described in such detail in that tremendous poem, in comparison with which the "Iliad" of Homer and the "AEneid" of Virgil shrink to small dimensions. Strange to say, this earliest city also is said to have been abandoned by the Pandus, headed by King Yudisthira; and their reason for doing so was that, one day, when the cover of a dish was removed, the king found on the food a fly. Dwellers in modern Delhi would not consider this a matter of importance — indeed, find it an everyday occurrence ; but the